SGO

[odonovan26]

Hi I hope someone one can help me myself and husband are in court tomorrow for the SGO for our granddaughter can any one give me ant advise on how much contact should be given LA say 6 times a year but mum is going to contest this any help will be appreciated

[Skippy]

In our case, parents were asking for weekly, we (and social services) were suggesting six times a year (school holidays). The judge said that six times per year should be the aim, but refused to give a contact order, as he said that if our nephew didn't want to see his parents, we'd have no choice. How right he was - first session went badly, and there has been no contact since.

Remember, that she will need time to settle - and in our case, I'd say that he is still unsettled 10 months later by any mention of his parents. In my opinion, six weeks is way too short a time between the order being granted and the first contact session, if it is likely that the contact is disruptive. Remember, the SGO puts you in charge, so I'd be tempted to ask for an order not to be made, but for a plan that can be more flexible to be in place.

[David Roth]

Please be aware that since 22nd April, Contact Orders are no longer being made. The issue is dealt with instead by a new Child Arrangements Order (CAO), which does basically the same thing (and can do some other things besides).

You may be as well to suggest that no such order be made - that you are willing to make arrangements for contact, as long as it is in the child's best interests, but you could suggest to the court that a CAO is unnecessary, since you do agree to contact, but should not to be tied to a particular arrangement for it, so that you can be free to exercise your parental responsibility and decide what will be best for the child.

I would suggest that it would be best to make this proposal in the genuine hope that contact can work well for the child, but you need the power to be able to step in if it just isn't working - not necessarily to stop it altogether, but possibly to change the frequency, change the venue, or arrange the timing to suit you and the child better. Whatever you suggest (and subsequently do), it has to be seen to be what is best for the child, and if you want to think about what the level of contact ought to be, then I would suggest thinking about what the effects on the child will be if it is set at a particular level.

[odonovan26]

Hi Went to court should have been for the final hearing didn’t really get to say anything in the court as we are not party to proccedings , court decided to wait on the mothers parenting assessment to be done and birth Mother disagrees with the amount of contact she will be getting once we get the SGO, but birth mother is in agreement with SGO, new court final hearing for august.
we have since been to see a solicitor who says we should go back to court to get Parent responsibility but this will be private law and we will have to pay for this and she hasnt said how much this will cost us? Do you think we would win this if we were to go to court or shall we wait until the final hearing in August ? I would like to change GD school before the summer school holidays so she has a couple of weeks to settle in then have the 6 weeks holiday before she has to go back but this is unlikly to happen as Mum still has the PR and we still havent managed to get her a passport we need one as my husbands mother and family all live in Ireland and this is getting him down as we cant make any arrangments to go and see them. the solicitor says once we get parent responsibility we will then get legal aid.
Any help would be much appreciated.

[Skippy]

Just seen that no-one responded to this, but there's still time. We became joined to the proceedings at the suggestion of the LA. My understanding is that even if you got PR, it would be shared with the mother until special guardianship is granted, do it might not help - you wouldn't be able to take the child out of the country without parental consent even if you could get a passport, and I know that when we did have an SGO in place, I had to visit the passport office (and thankfully, they were able to trace the mother's passport number as I had plenty of details about her) - it is not as straightforward as you might hope. I'd suggest that you wait for the court hearing, but it might be worth becoming joined to proceedings if you can afford it. We were quoted around £2000, but in the end the cost was £6000+.

[David Roth]

odonovan26, I'm sorry to have let this pass for so long without coming back to comment, and it may be that you have come to a decision about whether to apply for parental responsibility (PR) in the meantime.

It sounds as though the main reason you were thinking about applying for an order to give you PR (probably a Child Arrangements Order) was so that you could take the child out of the country on holiday. Under a CAO, you can take the child out of the country for up to 28 days without the agreement of the other people with PR. Once you get the SGO, you will be able to do so for up to 3 months.

As ied535 has stated, if the child is under an Interim Care Order or a full Care Order, then the local authority should be able to authorise you taking the child abroad. However, during the proceedings the parents will normally be given a say, and if they don't give their agreement then you would have to ask the judge to resolve it by giving a direction. It is normally social workers who have to sign the applications for passports for looked after children, although foster carers often have to do a lot of the work for them in terms of getting the forms and filling parts of them in.

Your lawyer is right that you stand a better chance of getting legal aid if you have parental responsibility for the child.

However, it could also mean that you have less chance of getting special guardianship support from the local authority. The local authority HAS to assess the special guardians' need for financial and other support, if requested, if the child is looked after immediately before the order is made (SGO regs, Reg 11). Otherwise, the local authority has discretion over whether to carry out the assessment. Some local authorities will take any opportunity they can to avoid providing support to special guardians, so if you are going to apply for a CAO to give you PR, you will need to be particularly vigilant over whether they are going to provide you with financial and other support. I would strongly suggest making sure this is dealt with before the order is made, as if the local authority doesn't agree to provide support at this stage, you will have very little chance of getting more support afterwards.